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Media’s Attack on Women

by Lateguy123 on February 24, 2017 - 7:41pm

Professor Sarah Waurechen

Gendered World Views

February 24th, 2017

Media’s Attack on Women

Pamela Anderson is an animal right’s advocate for an organization fighting against the inhumane treatment of animals, known as “People for ethical Treatment of Animals” (PETA). In the advertisement, Anderson adopts a sexual and flirtatious pose, her legs are at a seductive angle, her chest is pushed out as well as her face having a sultry allure. On her body, parts of her anatomy are sectioned off by a black dotted line and each body part is labelled, as it’s corresponding cut of meat, for example, her bottom is labelled as “rump” a term used solely for animals. Two slogans defending animal rights are found next to Anderson’s body: “All Animals have the same parts” and “ Have a heart Go Vegetarian” featured next to a symbol of a cow. The main purpose of the ad is to condemn the mistreatment of animals and to convince its viewers to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. Although, PETA is trying to convey a message regarding the mistreatment and objectification of animals by alluding to Anderson’s body as pieces of meat meant for the butcher’s block in order to create controversy and attract attention, this advertisement is harming women’s right more than it is aiding animal rights. By equating women to animals and reducing a woman’s body to that of an animal, the ad is marginalizing women as inferior beings and stripping them of their ability to think critically and reason.

The slogan “All animals have the same parts” is reducing Anderson’s body to a sum of individual parts and thus degrading women as a whole. By paralleling women to non-human animals, this ad reinforces an anti-feministic ideology, which celebrates misogyny, the objectification and sexualisation of the female body and patriarchal dominance. PETA compares the objectification of animals to the objectification of women in order to show the detriment this ideology creates, however, by using this counterpart example to further push their claim they are promoting the degradation of the female body.

By objectifying women, society enforces the “glass ceiling” on the female sex by limiting their ability to contribute to society as human beings (Miss Representation, 2011). The “glass ceiling” being a metaphorical boundary, yet still very present in the contemporary world, that hinders women from reaching their full potential. This is a result of all forms of media continuously portraying women and young girls as sex objects, as part of their strategies in attempts to gain awareness for their advertisement or cause. We should, therefore, be concerned with the objectification of women because if we continue to hinder the potential of our world, as a result of enforcing this metaphorical boundary upon women and young females, our world will not be able to progress and evolve through time, as demonstrated in great detail in Miss Representation. The very inspiring film demonstrates how women in society have great difficulty fulfilling leadership roles as a result of the “glass ceiling.”

Not only is the hyper sexualisation of women in advertisement an increasingly problematic marketing strategy, as it contributes to a degraded view of women, but in most cases this strategy attracts negativity and controversy and is less likely to properly convey the organization’s message. In this advertisement for the advocacy of animal rights, the objectification of Anderson’s body generates feelings of disgust and disagreement. Those who are unsupportive of sexualizing women for marketing purposes will overlook PETA’s animal rights cause and thus be unsupportive of PETA’s initiative because of the objectification of women in their advertisements. As it stands, the ad is very counter intuitive as the message it is trying to send to its viewers is being covered by the objectification of Pamela Anderson. In attempt to make this advertisement effective and not counter productive, I would keep the powerful, attention bringing Pamela Anderson, I would have her position adjusted to an upright stance, as opposed to a seductive pose while laying on a bed. In addition, I would also have her clothed and not sectioned of into pieces; perhaps a shirt with the campaign’s slogan or main objective printed on the shirt. This will surely add some credibility to PETA’s attempt to raise awareness for animal advocacy because as of present, credibility is absent.

In summary, the sexualisation of the female body is present in all forms of advertisement such as the news whether it is the sexualisation of the female news anchor, or the actual news itself (e-talk) to the Super-Bowl commercials, that we eagerly await each year and strangely enough, they keep on getting more and more sexualized. In doing so, we prevent the contemporary world from growing; this is because we do not allow society to arrive at its full potential and this is mainly due to the fact that women are not being allowed to have a say in world affairs because of the way they are represented to the worlds eyes, and the very few women who do have a say, are not heard because they so happen to be of female sex.